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Monday, May 16, 2016

The Canadian March for Life, Tomatoes, and Progress

[Today's guest post is by Alan Trahan.]

For the second year in a row, I took my home-made “We're Here, We're Queer, We're Pro-Life” sign out with me and my wife to March for Life on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Just like last
year, it was an incredible experience. I can't count the number of people who came up to take
our picture, or just to quietly thank us for being there—even (or perhaps especially!) among
the many, many conservative Catholics in attendance. Only
one person we talked to told us that gay marriage was destroying families, and even he made
sure to thank us for participating first. It was an amazing crowd, with an opening address by
an Algonquin elder and attendees including both robed brothers of the Missionaires del'Evangile and the president of the Pro-Life Humanists.

After the march, when Billie and I decided to strike out early for our car, we were
accosted by a group of counter-protesters just past the police escort's line of sight. They
pelted us with tomatoes while running past us, screaming, “We're here, we're queer, we riot!”,
flipped us off, and called us fascists. We were not the only protesters targeted; at least one
other group, the aforementioned Pro-Life Humanists, had their banner vandalized by the fruit-wielding
activists. And the previous night a number of people interrupted a candlelight vigil, causing a ruckus in which two people were arrested.

But the most important part of this, I suspect, is the fact that it was my transgender self and
the humanist group that were specifically targeted. (Stopped by a crossing light a safe
distance away from us, our new friends re-emphasized their chant with an outraged, “We're
queer too!”, as if this somehow had bearing on the comparative validity of their mainly
vegetable-based argument.) To the marchers, it seems, even if we're heathens, queers and
humanists are allies in a struggle that transcends any lesser differences. But to the counter-protesters,
we're a clear and present danger. We're evidence that this isn't just the campaign of religious
patriarchy they want to dismiss it as, but a movement that can and will involve all kinds of
people, and is doing so more and more every year. I think that worries them, and I think that's
a really, really good sign.